Photo a Day, January 2017

As I was reviewing my files in order to write my retrospective on 2016, it struck me that I haven't done any Photo a Day challenges in a while. So for the month of January, I'll be posting a daily photo - along with commentary, of course - based on Fat Mum Slim' s prompts:

Since it's already January 3rd, I'm several days behind. Fortunately, I'm pretty sure I can knock off the first three subjects in a single photograph.

1: my fave colour
2: delicious
3: circle

My 5-year-old daughter is fascinated by the idea that everyone has a favorite color, so one of the first questions she asks everyone she meets is, "What is your favorite color?" (usually followed by the happy exclamation, "Mine's purple!"). She also repeatedly confirms with everyone in the family that our favorite colors have not changed. She's totally flummoxed by the fact that her brother changes his favorite color on a regular basis. But fortunately, she can always rely on Mum and Dad to confirm that indeed, we do both still love green. Any time she brings me a something with a choice of colors, she offers me the green one. I can't remember the last time I ate an M&M that wasn't green. And you can be quite certain that I am not allowed to eat any of the Kisses in this bowl other than the green-wrapped ones. She, of course, always chooses a purple for herself. Fortunately, my son's current favorite color is red, so eventually we will polish off all these Kisses.

This photograph also carries out the theme of delicious, because not only are the objects in the photo chocolate, they are DARK chocolate. My whole family shares a love of dark chocolate. Milk chocolate is fine, in limited quantities, but it feels like a pale, sickly-sweet imitation of the real thing. White chocolate is fabulous, but it's a completely different flavor. Dark chocolate, though...the richness, the perfect balance of bitter and sweet, the smooth texture on the tongue. It is the embodiment of the word "delicious."

And finally, the simple circle of a bowl is rarely used in our house except at Christmas time. It's simple white circle never competes with the embellishments of Christmas candy, whether it be red and green M&Ms, miniature red-and-white striped candy canes, or - as here - brilliantly purple, red, and green foil wrapped Hershey's Kisses. Growing up, my family always had a bowl of ribbon candy set out at Christmas, and it was nearly always displayed in a similarly plain, unadorned silver dish. Complexity is set off by simplicity. The white circle needs the brilliant colors and the brilliant colors need the white circle.

My fave colour. Delicious. Circle.

Photo a Day: Partial, Me Time, Stairs, Begins with M

Oops, I seem to have gotten quite behind on my Photo A Day-ing. So although the official topics I've missed are Partial, Me Time, Stairs, and Begins with M, I'm going to tie them all together with a single theme: My backyard.

My backyard is mostly filled with an inground pool. However, I do have a small herb garden and a strip of flowerbed, and a porch overlooking the yard. Right now, the only flowers blooming are the impatiens I planted in May, and a few blossoms on my lilies, which are loaded with fat buds just waiting to explode. This lily is my subject for "Partial".

Even though only four buds have opened, it's glorious already. I can't wait until the other 20 (yes, 20 - I counted) blossoms open. This plant makes me happy, even when it's only partway to its glory. 

The next subject was "Me Time." I love evenings by the pool with my husband, watching the setting sun (or the tiki torches) glittering on the silent water. But when it's just me, I love the backyard in the sunshine of early morning. I often spot bunnies having their breakfasts in the grass, chipmunks chasing each other in the bushes, and birds of all kinds fluttering around the feeder. The sun sparkles on the water of the pool and the dew on the greens in the garden. The neighborhood is quiet, with only the occasional whoosh of a passing car or a distant voice interrupting the sounds of nature - birds chirping, a breeze shuffling the trees, the murmur of water. It is wonderfully calming Me Time. 

My home is full of stairs. Concrete stairs with iron railings leading up to the front door, inside wooden stairs going from the main floor up to the bedrooms and down to the basement, a short step leading out the back door. But the stairs with the most personality are the ones leading up to the porch. Once painted green, they have aged and weathered into something from a Wyeth painting. There's something very comforting and serene about their shabbiness, like a threadbare coat you can't bring yourself to throw away or a stuffed animal that's been loved out of its fur or a beloved book whose pages are yellowed and falling out. They're homely in both sense of the word.

And finally, my subject that "Begins with M" is mint. I originally planted it in my fledgling herb garden three or four years ago, and - as mint is wont to do - it has wandered all over the garden. I've torn it out in a few spots where it's begun to crowd out other plants, I've pulled up large chunks to give away to friends, I've hacked it back and stripped its leaves to use them in lemonade, iced tea, and mint juleps. But it still survives and thrives. It's my only herb that successfully overwinters in spite of my neglect. It's a tenacious little thing. I admire that.

And lest anyone worry that I'll get behind on my Photo A Day posting again, I can assure you that I will have no difficulty in finding tomorrow's subject: it's "pile."

Photo of the Day: Four Things

My son is not a big sweet-eater. Every now and then he likes to have a lollipop as a treat, or maybe a cookie. But there is one kind of sweet that he'll practically turn himself inside-out for, and that's a York Peppermint Patty.

Today we were at the grocery store picking up a few supplies for a couple of baking projects, and I asked him if there was anything he'd like me to get: apples, meatballs, a particular kind of pasta. He hesitated for a moment, then asked, "Can we get some peppermint patties to keep in the fridge?"

I don't usually buy a lot of sweets and junk foods for the kids, but now and then I do like to get them a treat, so I decided this was a good opportunity to give in. We picked out a bag of middle-sized patties (not tiny bite-size ones, and not huge saucer-sized ones), and after carefully scanning them at the price checker, he placed them gently in the cart. After we checked out, he proudly carried the bag containing his precious peppermint patties out to the car.

So it was no surprise when, after we finished eating dinner, he immediately asked if he could have a peppermint patty for dessert. I sent him upstairs to get a couple out of the fridge. He came back carrying four candies in his hands, but before I could open my mouth to scold him that four was too many, he solemnly handed one to his dad, one to his sister, and tucked one next to my plate. He hadn't taken just one for himself. He'd taken four, so he could share.

Four Things.

Photo of the Day: Where I Stood

This filing cabinet and I have quite a history.

I bear bruises from it. I bear scars from it. Part of me (mostly my right hip) kind of hates it. But I also bear a very powerful memory of clinging to it while experiencing my first "real" labor pains.

I woke up in the middle of the night a few weeks before my due date with my first child. (This was not at all unusual at this point in my pregnancy.) I realized that I had to pee. (This was also not at all unusual at this point in my pregnancy.) But as I made my way to the bathroom in the dark, I realized that what was going on with my body was, in fact, unusual. My water had broken and I was beginning to feel the first pangs of labor.

I wasn't in any pain at this point, and the pangs were definitely spread quite far apart, so I got back in bed and gathered my thoughts for a few hours until I decided I'd better wake my husband. He called the doctor's office and the nurse told me to feel free to labor at home as long as I could, but to come in when I felt ready or when the pains reached a certain frequency and duration.

I was up and dressed, so I puttered around in the office for a while, waiting for things to progress. I was headed out of the office to grab something to drink when the first real labor pain hit me. I reached out blindly, bending over and clinging to this filing cabinet, while quietly grunting, "Dang!" much to the amusement of my husband. (He was even more amused when I repeated the procedure using a stop sign right outside the hospital, as we both wondered aloud how many times that stop sign had been used for that purpose.)

So although this cabinet and I have not always had an amicable relationship, it still holds a special place in my heart, because it's Where I Stood.

Photo of the Day: Cute

With a photo topic like "cute," I'm sure that no-one is surprised that the subject I chose is my children. They are pretty much the epitome of "cute."

Except when they're not.

This photo was taken on a day when they had spent most of their time fighting like cats and dogs, each one demanding the toy the other had, poking each other, pinching each other, blocking each other's view of the TV, stealthily punching each other in the back of the car, repeatedly tattling on each other, etc., etc. It was anything BUT cute.

But when I brought out these cool sunglasses which were a gift from some friends who'd stayed at our house, the animosity vanished and the cuteness appeared. They snuggled together happily and chattered together like a pair of parakeets.

It didn't last for long, but while it did, it was very, very cute.

Cute.

Photo a Day: On My To-Do List

Being a stay-at-home mom, I always have a long list of things on my to-do list. But one item that never seems to go away, no matter how often I do it, is putting away laundry.

Not doing laundry; not even folding laundry. There are definitely times (they only last for about 12 seconds each, but there ARE times) when all the laundry in the house is clean and folded - nothing languishing in the dryer, nothing collecting in the laundry hampers, no damp towels on the bathroom floor - but I don't think there has ever been a time when there hasn't been a stash of neatly folded laundry loitering somewhere in my house.

Most often, it's giant piles on the stairs, as in this photo. With my laundry room in the basement and the bedrooms on the second floor, I rarely make separate trips to bring laundry upstairs, so it waits here until I'm headed upstairs for some other reason. Most often that "other reason" is that I'm going to bed. And since I can only carry one (or sometimes two, if I'm feeling especially adventurous) stack of laundry at a time, it takes me several days to get the stairs cleared.

And of course, by then, another stack has usually joined them.

On the rare occasion I manage to get all the stacks from the stairs moved up into their respective bedrooms at the same time, they generally languish in front of the bureaus where they belong for some time until the owner is reminded (and reminded, and reminded) to put them away. Or, more likely, until I get annoyed enough to put them away myself. (Note: These comments do not apply to the adults in the household, who are usually pretty good about putting their clothes away in a timely fashion. Well, the male adult in the household is. The female is usually pretty good about moving them from the floor to the couch which serves as an adjunct bureau.)

So yeah, it's pretty much always On My To-Do List.

Photo of the Day: Reflection

What do you think of when you hear the word "reflection"? Probably a mirror, right? A mirror, at least in modern times, provides the truest, the most accurate, the realest reflection. You can see a reflection of some kind in many shiny surfaces - the bowl of a spoon, the surface of a calm lake, a well-polished pot lid - but unless that surface is smooth and flat, the reflection will be distorted and uneven. If the surface is cloudy, or bumpy, or moving, the reflection you see does not accurately represent whatever it reflects.

Another sense of the word "reflection," however, means looking in at oneself; thinking about one's life and one's actions; self-examination. Such reflection is rarely as clear as the reflection of one's image in a smooth mirror. A truer representation of that kind of reflection is a rippling pool, a cracked mirror, an imperfect piece of metal. Our thoughts are as ever-changing as the lights dancing on the surface of moving water, as fragmented as a shattered bit of glass, as warped as a dented tin can.

But even with those damaged and imperfect vessels, we can still see glimpses of the truth, if we look hard enough.

Reflection.

Photo a Day: Purple

As the mother of a 4-1/2 year old girl, it took me approximately 8 seconds to gather this collection of purple items. I didn’t even have to leave the room. At any given time, I would estimate that there is an average of 23 purple items in every room of my house. We have purple stuffed animals of every ilk, purple clothing for every occasion, purple toys and purses and dolls and accessories, purple markers and crayons and stickers and paper and glue and glitter. Purple, purple, purple.

I’m not quite sure what the universal obsession is that seems to attack every girl between the ages of roughly 3 and 14. For some, it lasts a short time; for others it lasts for years, or even into adulthood. But there are very few small girls who do not experience at least a passing obsession with the color purple.

I will admit that it makes wardrobe coordination a snap. Pretty much anything my daughter can pull out of her drawer will match anything else, because they’re all purple, with the occasional splash of pink or white or black, just to shake things up a little. My daughter owns purple jeans, purple leggings, light purple pants, dark purple pants, striped purple pants, solid purple shirts, flowered purple shirts, polka-dotted purple shirts, purple socks, and scads of purple underpants. Not to mention purple hair elastics and purple hair bows. Her favorite dress-up princess dress? Purple. Her favorite stuffed animal? Purple. Her favorite purse? Purple. Her favorite tutu? Purple. Purple, purple, purple.

I’m sure that someday she’ll grow out of it. And by then, I’ll probably be beyond ready. But for now, purple is the color of happy in our house.

Purple.

Photo a Day: Treat

Everyone has their own idea of what constitutes a “treat.” For some, it’s an ice cream sundae, or a bar of chocolate, or a piece of cake. For others, it’s a frothy high-end coffee or a fancy cocktail. For still others, it’s a massage or a mani-pedi or a cut and color at a nice salon. And I enjoy most of those as an occasional treat. But my favorite quick treat, hands down, is a bubble bath.

There’s nothing more relaxing than closing myself in the bathroom – away from children asking me to help find their shoes or put on their favorite TV show or stop their brother from poking them in the eye; away from husband wondering what’s for dinner or asking if I’ve seen his keys; away from ringing phones and pinging email alerts and electronic appointment reminders; away from the laundry that needs to be sorted and the dishes that need to be washed and the fish that need to be fed - immersing myself in a steamy hot tub full of scented bubbles, sipping on a glass of wine, listening to soft classical music, and reading a favorite book as I escape from the world for an hour (or two).

My husband knows this – and encourages it. Any time he can see that I’ve had a rough day, he’ll suggest that I go soak in the tub while he takes care of the kids. He also takes it upon himself to be sure that my stash of “bath goodies” is always well stocked. Every Christmas he and the kids make a pilgrimage to the Lush store and Bath and Body Works to choose a selection of bath bombs, scented bubble bath, fancy soaps, and other kinds of scented and soothing bath products for me.

So any time I need a treat, everything I need is right there waiting for me.

Treat.

Photo a Day: Key

Much like many moms, I suspect, I spend a large amount of time hunting for my keys. I’m usually grabbing them as I rush out the door to drop someone off at school, at gymnastics, at dance class; or heading out to pick up groceries, a last-minute birthday present, a pair of shoes to replace ones that were apparently instantaneously outgrown. Or I’m rushing back into the house, tossing them in the general direction of the drawer they supposedly live in while hustling a potty-dancing child toward the bathroom or running into the kitchen to grab a snack for a child who is about to die of starvation. They often land in a coat pocket, deep in the bottom of my purse, or occasionally are even left dangling forlornly from a doorknob.

These keys, however, also mark several transitions in my life. The pair of silver keys was given to me by my husband shortly before we were married, a symbol of “his house” becoming “our house” – or rather, becoming “our home.” Other than our wedding rings, it was the most tangible sign of us uniting our lives and our futures.

The black car key belongs to a silver-blue minivan, one for which I relinquished my last “single woman car,” my beloved Honda Civic sedan, Marguerite (yes, I name my cars). I was pregnant with our second child, and my husband and I realized that we needed a larger car to be able to accommodate two car seats and two parents-in-law. It made sense for my husband to keep a smaller, more efficient sedan, since he commuted to work and put many more miles on his car than I did, so I got to use the van for my day-to-day errands. I was extremely nervous (let’s be honest: I was terrified) at the thought of driving such a large car – after all, the last time I’d driven anything larger than a hatchback or a compact car was 25 years prior, when I learned to drive on my parents’ gigantic Plymouth Grand Fury – but I learned very quickly to love Millie, with her tight turning radius, helpful backup camera, and backseat DVD player.

So every time I’m searching for my keys, fighting off panic that this might be the time they disappear for good, it’s not just that I’m worried about being late. It’s because my keys are a symbol of my life – my wonderful, crazy, beloved life.

Key.

Photo of the Day: June 2016

Life sometimes has a way of running away with you, doesn't it? Mine has been running even faster than usual lately. I'm looking forward to wrapping up homeschooling in a few weeks, feeling relief over surviving a wonderful (but exhausting) week-long family vacation, and glad to have completed helping multiple theatre groups with costuming projects. But I've missed blogging. I've missed it horribly. I need some kind of incentive to get me blogging regularly again. And what do I do when I need an incentive to blog? I find the latest "Photo a Day" list! Here's the topic list for June, courtesy of the FatMumSlim blog:

1. Key
2. Treat
3. Purple
4. Reflection
5. On My To-Do List
6. Mistake
7. Cute
8. Where I Stood
9. Four Things
10. Partial
11. Me Time
12. Stairs
13. Begins with M
14. Pile
15. The Floor
16. Vibrant
17. My Name
18. Something Alive
19. No Filter
20. Water
21. Looking Up
22. Delicious
23. Far
24. Gold
25. I Shop Here
26. Handwritten
27. Loud
28. Quiet
29. Sunshine
30. Stripes

I hope that my readers have missed reading my blog as much as I've missed writing it, and I look forward to getting (virtually) back together with all of you this month! Thank you for your patience. I hope you enjoy the next month of photos!

Photo A Day: Flat Lay

I bet you had the same reaction that I did to the subject of today’s photo: “Flat lay? What on earth is a flat lay? Do I lie on my back and take a picture? Do I lie flat and take a photo at floor level? Do I squash something flat on a surface and take a photo of it?” You might be surprised to know that the latter guess is actually pretty close to being right. A quick check of the FatMumSlim blog where this photo challenge originated revealed that I was not the only participant stymied by today’s topic. Her simple explanation is, “A flat is basically when you’re shooting items from directly above. Usually these items will be arranged or styled on a flat surface.” She then posted a number of examples. If you’ve ever looked at a clothing catalog which doesn’t photograph their merchandise on models or mannequins, you’ve seen examples of a flat lay. All those “how to” recipe videos that have been all over Facebook lately? Take a screenshot of any of those and you’ve got yourself a flat lay.  

Which means that this is the rare subject that I can’t really get a candid shot of. I’ll actually have to get some stuff, try and compose it artistically, and then take a photo of it.

I can already tell this isn’t going to go well.

I began by wandering around the house to see if any objects inspired me. I started off on my husband’s bedside table. He empties his pockets there every night, so there are usually some interesting objects strewn around. I found a small pile of change, a few folded dollar bills, and a set of keys. Since gravity and chance had already arrange the change more artistically than I could have, I simply slid the bills and the keys into the frame and snapped a few shots. 

I didn’t realize until afterwards that there was also some pocket lint and a hair or two. Realism is good, right?

As I continued my wanderings, I came across an outfit my daughter had shed on her way to the dress-up box. I channeled my inner Baby Gap stylist and laid it out as artistically as I could on my living room floor. I added a hair bow in an attempt to make the headlessness less creepy. 

It didn’t work. This still looks as creepy as the headless mannequins in the window of Baby Gap. At least I didn’t put a baseball cap in there.

While I was setting up that flat lay, however, I spied our canvas bag of library books. Hey, books would be a good flat lay project! They didn’t look quite right in a random pile, so I decided to arrange them in a circle, with one of the smaller books at the center. 

It’s kind of cute, and it’s definitely a good representation of what my kids enjoy reading and doing, but the layout just didn’t end up as artistic as I’d hoped. On to the next random household objects!

On the other side of the room, our piano has some interesting knick knacks on it, including a candy dish whose contents – over a month after Christmas – are finally starting to dwindle. I thought this one came out pretty cool. 

My difficulty here, however, was that the piano is so shiny it was like taking photographs of a mirror. Despite my close cropping, you can still see the reflection of my hands holding the camera at the bottom of the image. Rats. Next!

Wandering from my living room into my dining room, I noticed all my home school supplies, including a few sentences that my son had written after reading a book about China. I added a pair of scissors, a random assortment of dry erase markers, and a pencil and pencil sharpener, and snapped away. 

I love the shadows cast by the markers at the lower edge of the paper, and the crisp line of demarcation of light and shadow on the side of the pencil sharpener. This one is getting a little closer to what I have in mind. Besides, I find my son’s “essay” completely charming. But most people probably wouldn’t, so I’m going to keep trying.

At the bottom of the stairs, I found my daughter's dance bag. I pulled out her ballet and tap shoes and her favorite purple snood and arrayed them on top of the bag. Note the artsy angle of the bag against the tiles underneath. Yeah, I did that. Go, me. 

That’s pretty cute. But, wait! Her bag is a “Ballerina” bag, not a generic “Dance” bag. Maybe I should get rid of the tap shoes and try again. Put the snood where the invisible ballerina’s hair would be, put the ballet shoes next to…the ballet shoes already shown on the bag…

Nope, somehow the shoes look too crumpled and faded. Not working for me. On to the next room!

Heading into the kitchen, I scanned the kitchen table – which, as in many kitchens in homes with small children, tends to be a dumping ground for school papers and crafts, recipes, opened and unopened junk mail, and abandoned projects of every kind. For me “every kind” usually involves sewing, which is why my kitchen table had become the resting place for my little sewing scissors, my needle holder, and my giant bag of thread. I selected a few colors and sizes of spools, arranged them in a way that seemed vaguely artistic, and took a few shots.

The focus isn’t as crisp as I’d like, and the lighting is kind of uneven, but I like the look. I like the various kinds of spools and the various angles they’re at; I like the multicolored tangle of thread at the top of the needle tomato and the little emery bag peeking out at its side. I even like the trails of thread leading off to where they’re hopelessly tangled with the other spools of thread still in the bag. Yeah, this one is kind of fun. I wonder what else I could do with spool of thread?

I tried laying a bunch of them on their sides, but they kept rolling around. I grabbed a paper plate and arranged a bunch by color – I found myself singing the Cat in the Hat song that my kids often sing: “Red, orange and yellow, green followed by blue, indigo and violet, that’s a rainbow song for you!” I didn’t have any orange thread, although I was delighted to discover a spool as close to indigo as I was ever likely to find, and I set them up in a circle. The hollow center made it look too much like a donut, so I grabbed some “non-rainbow” colors (gray, black, and tan) and added them in the middle.

Once again, the unintentional shadows create some added visual interest. I particularly like the one at the bottom that shows the wedge-shaped dividers inside the blue spool. This one is kind of fun.

But then I decided I wanted to try an arrangement that was purely random, rather than something I’d carefully laid out. Wandering into my office, I found a bag of coffee stirrers I had bought in lieu of popsicle sticks for some project or other I had done with my kids. I grabbed a handful and dropped them on my desk from a height of a few inches, but they mostly fell into a neat line, looking rather like a tiny picket fence. So instead, I tried dropping them on the floor, end first, from a height of a foot or two. 

This I like! The random angles, the clump at the lower right and the single stick at the upper left, even the uneven lighting, all work for me. This might be my favorite photo of the day.

It’s a little embarrassing that my most artistic and interesting layout was the only one that was 100% out of my control. But here’s something that’s even more embarrassing: The final photograph I took for this assignment was of a tea party that my 4-year-old had set up for her dollies. 

What can I say, the kid’s got an artistic eye. Even when she doesn’t mean to, she designs one heck of a flat lay.

Flat lay. 

Photo A Day: Home

With a topic like “Home,” you are probably expecting a photo related to my house. Perhaps my front door, or the entire front of my house. Perhaps a photo of my living room, or my kitchen. Perhaps even a photo of my kids in the playroom or my husband in the office. But to me, the word “home” is not the same as the word “house.” My house is a specific place; it’s where I live, where I sleep, where I spend most of my time. But home can be anywhere that my family is. So last night, this was home.

In typical home fashion, not everyone was happy at that given moment. Two-thirds of the family is happy (actually, three-quarters; you can’t see the expression on my face, but since you can see that I have a buttered herb roll, calamari, and a cocktail in front of me, it’s a pretty safe assumption), which seems about right for any average moment.

And you know what? It’s okay that not everyone is perfectly happy. Life is not perfect; my family is not perfect. Any family that claims to be perfect all the time is either lying or deluded. To be honest, a family that is always happy would be a little creepy. If there’s always happiness, there’s no dissension; if there’s no dissention, there are no opinions; if there are no opinions, there is no thought. And if there’s no thought, there’s no point.

So I’ll take my imperfect home exactly as it is. Wherever we are, whatever we’re doing, we’re in it together: thinking together, forming opinions together, disagreeing together, being happy together. Most of the time, anyway. Because being together is what makes these people my home.

Home.

Photo A Day: Smile

Okay, I admit that this is totally cheating, because I took this photo over four months ago, but when the subject of the day is “smile” and I happen to have this photo nearby, how could I NOT use it??

In my completely unbiased (HA! not) opinion, my daughter has pretty much the cutest smile ever. And not only am I biased because she’s my kid, I’m also biased because she’s my clone. Seriously, this kid is 40-years-ago me in a curly blond wig.

But I’m glad that she has a great smile because I think having a friendly, welcoming smile is so much more important than being good looking. I’ve always been very happy that the remark that people (both strangers and friends) make most often about my appearance is that I have a great smile. Being good looking is nice, but skin wrinkles, hair turns gray and thins, breasts sag, and bellies and hips expand. But a pleasant, genuine smile is as beautiful at 100 years old as it is at 100 days old. 

And every age in between.

Smile!